Fancy a pint?

As part of their onslaught of new features over the past few weeks, Foursquare rolled out a list feature that makes it simple to create guided tours. Betabeat put together a Visitors Guide to Silicon Alley with the help of our Foursquare friends, who we gave editing privileges to. Yesterday Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley published a history of Foursquare with a list made on Foursquare. Meta!

The early days of the company seem mostly to consist of Dens and Naveen brainstorming in coffee shops, sucking down java and free wi-fi. At the Think Coffee of Washington Square Park, writes Mr. Crowley "Naveen & I built 1/2 of the Foursquare prototype here (mostly at the back table near the bathroom). The "mayor" feature in 4SQ came from our buddy Chad making fun of us for camping at that table :)"

Mr. Crowley mixes in the history of Dodgeball, the predecessor to Foursquare, which was bought and later killed by Google. "Before this place as Essex Ale House, it was called 12" (er, vinyl record) which was ground zero for early days of dodgeball.com," writes Mr. Crowley of the Essex Street street bar. "On the day Dodgeball was bought by Google we threw a huge party here."

Aside from ITP, where Mr. Crowley shouts out his favorite class, Big Games by Prof. Frank Lantz, the history of Foursquare seems to have been mostly spent in Bowery bars, a fitting breeding grounds for New York's breakout social network.